OK, so I am striking out left and right with building owners in my area. Only about 20% of the buildings up for lease even have sprinklers, and some buildings that have been vacant for FIVE YEARS won't even attempt to talk about a short term lease!

So I'm considering an outdoor haunt for my first year. One thing I should mention is that in our state they don't allow haunts in tents because the tents aren't class A, AND there would still need to be sprinklers...

SO...

I'm thinking about a haunted maze. Please critique this idea... I build the entire maze outdoors, with a PARTIAL roof. There would be the main parallel roof support running lengthwise above the haunt (think the peak of a rooftop) so that I could use a huge tarp to cover the entire thing in case of rain (that way the water would run OFF the sides and not pool up on top. The sides of the haunt would have a partial roof to help keep the sound bouncing around within the maze. And finally, when the haunt is being run, the top would be covered by camo netting so it gave the appearance of being inside.

Please share your thoughts and potential hardships. Landowners all around my area allow fireworks tents, this would be a more involved project but along similar lines.

My girlfriend's (who will soon be my fiance!) father has been building homes for the past 30-40 years so construction-wise we will have some help, but what do you pros think of this idea?

Thanks so much, and meanwhile I am still looking for buildings to rent but I want a decent contingency plan!

OK, so I am striking out left and right with building owners in my area . . . So I'm considering an outdoor haunt for my first year.

Create your own building. JB did Castle Dragon on a deck with a roof. I can send you plans. If you can build an outdoor deck in your backyard with a roof over it, you can do that with the haunt. Of course, you will need to handle the sprinkler system out of pocket.

Allen also had ideas for a haunted trail in his book as an easy, economical way to get started.

As far as your girlfriend's father being in construction, that can be positive and/or a negative. If he understands the concept of modular wall panels and temporary construction, and can follow haunt industry standard designs to that effect, then it's a major positive. If, however, he can't quite wrap his brain around the concept, then it becomes a major negative.

I have searched the internet for some sort of "lego" style flame retardant wall panels, but to no avail. I would love it if somebody could point me in a direction for this, as I believe it would drastically reduce construction time...

As far as building my own "building".. that's sort of what I was going for... I'm positive I could find a place that would allow me to use an abandoned parking lot like the fireworks tents do. My whole point in having a Partial roof, though, was to AVOID the sprinkler issue (not trying to spend THAT much money on it lol)

I have searched the internet for some sort of "lego" style flame retardant wall panels, but to no avail. I would love it if somebody could point me in a direction for this, as I believe it would drastically reduce construction time...

As far as building my own "building".. that's sort of what I was going for... I'm positive I could find a place that would allow me to use an abandoned parking lot like the fireworks tents do. My whole point in having a Partial roof, though, was to AVOID the sprinkler issue (not trying to spend THAT much money on it lol)

I have always thought that it would be cool to do a building that looked like the roof had been burnt and partially blown away. You would still have the trusses and a few boards that were st holding it all together, but for the most part it would be open air. Vines growing on top would really give it the weathered look. I would also continue this theme with some of the walls, maybe a block wall that fell in and burnt furniture everywhere.

If your looking for an outdoor attraction take a look at Zombie Safari Paintball. Its easy to set up and very popular with customers. Find it on facebook or give me a call for more information. 573 881 7061
Greg
Zombie Safari Paintball Attractions

Yeah I like the idea of a partial ceiling, simply to get around this ridiculous regulation enforcing tent haunts to get sprinklers. God it would be so much easier to just get a big fabric building and install more emergency exits!!!

They took it a step further in Nebraska tho... you can't use tents because they haven't found a tent material that's class A fire rated! Its like you have to invest $20k in regs BEFORE you can scene invest in a haunt...

The other option is just do total outdoors, but that will severly limit your audio/visual options, even with camo netting over the top because if it rains, you're f*ck'd!

But putting up something is better than nothing... unless you're worried that purely outdoors wont be nearly as good as how AMAZING you could make it indoors! Or at least under a damn tent! Grrr

I would think that in Nebraska, you would be thinking about a haunted cornfield. We do 3 haunted houses and a haunted cornfield. The haunted houses have stupid money invested in them compared to the cornfield, but the cornfield is our main event. It seems that in our area, people love the natural setting of the outdoors. They like being in a cornfield, they like the moon light, we have a small section of woods that they love. Outdoor haunts can be very cool. Look at Haunted overload. There are many examples of great attractions that happen outdoors. I love my haunted houses, but if I had to do it over again, I would have invested the money into the haunted cornfield, and avoided the code nazis in the process. You can always do small buildings and scenes along the trail. Lots of potential, less headache, and the customers love the outdoors.

But, I don't own, nor know anybody that owns a farm. I'm thinking that entry to something like that would be just as hard as entry to these warehouses that everybody wants a 3-5 year lease.

It's gonna come down to meeting with the fire marshal again... only sitting down and going over some options. For example, I'm thinking if the fabric building is open and has plenty of clearance over the event, that it could still be considered "outside". Here is a link...

There are others like this, in which you can actually close the edges to keep weather out (Obviously in this instance it would be during closing time. But you would have the camo netting above your event for an extra layer of weather/sound protection. Just an idea.

Also I have to talk with them about sprinkler options. I have found a couple old threads (one of which YOU were actually very active in Mike lol) that talked about alternate ways to get sprinklers. I have found the plastic ones (blazemaster) and have heard of the chemical ones... so it's really going to come down to the fire marshal on this one.

I am going for a quarantine theme here, so pretty hard to do that COMPLETELY outside. Imagine the government quarantining a bunch of people infected with stuff, but keeping them outside, and in CROPS nonetheless! LMAO the regulators would never allow THAT! But I see what you're talking about, and I agree that people like the "outside-ness" of corn mazes. One other problem is that there are already two of them in Omaha area.

I honestly don't care WHAT I have to do... this was a childhood dream, but has now become AN OBSESSION! If anything I just want to do it because the barriers of entry are so damn high, that the quality of show in my area has stopped improving, and as a CUSTOMER I'm offended!

Mike, did you ever get your (5,600?) indoor haunt sprinklered? I remember reading that in '09 you talked to Larry on the phone, and he gave you some ideas of how to do it cheaper... will you share?